High Efficiency Home Heating Furnaces
High efficiency home heating furnaces are becoming very popular due to the high cost of heating homes and due to the awearness of the harm we are doing to the envirenmnet. The most commonly used type of furnace in homes in the United States is the forced air central heating system powered by natural gas. Due to the inefficiency of the typical furnace, people on average, have been waisting thirty percent of the money they spend to heat their homes. They have also added more carbon dioxide into the air than would occur if they were using a high efficient home heating furnace.
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy in 1992 initiated new standards for furnaces in order to cut down on air pollution. All furnaces now being manufactured must comply with the new regulations and at a minimum covert at least seventy-eight percent of fuel used into heat. Numerous furnace models are available that surpass the minimum Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency rating. When you purchase a new furnace be sure you check the rating in order to discover just how efficient the furnace will be in your home. The Department of Energy has stated that the furnace should have an efficiency of over ninety percent in order to be considered a high efficiency furnace.
Technology Advances
Some of the design changes made to home heating furnaces to increase efficiency include electronic spark ignition and the hot surface ignition. The hot surface ignition is considered to be more reliable than the electronic spark ignition and the hot surface ignition uses a coil to ignite the gas mixture. The Lennox pulse 21 furnace utilizes a technology known as pulse combustion which provides the home heating furnace with a 96.2 rating.
The high efficiency furnace units are typically condensing gas furnaces. They are designed with two heat exchangers which allow the exhaust gasses to pass through the second exchanger to extract and utilize the heat that would ordinarily exit through the flue. If you choose to purchase a condensing gas furnace make sure the model is provided with a long term warranty. Technological advances have also been made in the combustion technology used in home heating furnaces. One system utilizes sealed combustion and takes all the air it needs from the outdoors and mixes it with the fuel at a controlled rate in order to be maximizing the amount of heat it produces from the fuel.
More efficient gas valves are now provided for home heating furnaces along with more efficient technology to run the blower motor which reduces the amount of electricity that is required. Home heating furnaces are available that utilize a microprocessor control board that has the ability to automatically make adjustments to the output of the furnace as well as the speed of the blower to maximize efficiency and this procedure is possible due to information provided from the thermostat. If you are going to purchase a home heating furnace you might want to select a high efficient model that will save money and cause less air pollution.
